Mindful learning
Arnold Schwarzenegger—one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time—is famous for saying that one mindful rep is worth ten reps where you’re just going through the motions.
This is even more true for language learning.
In SuperCoco, we want you to relax and “just absorb” language. We want you to get into your part and enjoy the stories. We want you to speak Spanish out loud with gusto.
But this attitude of relaxed absorption doesn’t mean you’re a passive recipient.
We’re not children—and most of us aren’t surrounded by Spanish twenty-four hours a day. To be efficient, we have to make the most of every sentence we hear. And to do that, we have to pay attention.
Building blocks of language
You see, as you build your internal library of building blocks, you’re not just stockpiling sentences. You’re learning to generate them. Each sentence you enter into your library is really a template—for an infinite number of other sentences.
The beauty of this system is that your mind automatically treats them as templates. For example, if you learn the sentence:
| Quiero la pelota. |
| I want the ball. |
Your brain immediately recognizes that there’s a slot there:
| Quiero la _______. |
| I want the _______. |
It knows you can plug in other things you want, because English works exactly the same way.
| Quiero la barca. Quiero la camisa. Quiero la mariposa. |
| I want the boat. I want the shirt. I want the butterfly. |
But then you learn:
| Quiero el dinero. |
| I want the money. |
Now you’re encountering something unfamiliar: two different ways to say “the”. You’ll probably mix these up at first. That’s a sure sign that you’re onto a pattern in Spanish that’s different from English.
SuperCoco gives you the ability to drill down into any sentence and read about its components. Don’t worry about memorizing any rules—just familiarize yourself with the general pattern (in this case: masculine and feminine genders) and then go back to learning conversations.
Now that you’re aware of the pattern, you’ll see it everywhere. Notice it. Every time you learn a new word, notice its gender. Every time you have a sentence with gender in it, savor it.
Pretty soon, gender will seem totally normal—and when it’s violated it will “feel” wrong. Just like for native speakers.
By being mindful of all the fascinating peculiarities you discover in Spanish, you’ll internalize them faster. This is the key to leaving Spanglish behind and speaking Spanish like a native.